iCPAN v1.0.2 is Now in Apple's App Store

After about a week of waiting for an official review, iCPAN was reviewed, approved and published to Apple's App store earlier today. There are no code changes in this release, but the modules are up to date as of Nov 8, 2010. This release also includes manuals and cookbook POD like Moose::Manual.

I had hoped to get this release out in September, but real life got in the way. In the meantime, I've streamlined the way the POD is processed and future releases will be easier and hopefully much more regular.

iCPAN has 732 downloads to date, which is about 632 than I had initially hoped for when we started coding this app. Top downloading countries are the US, Japan, Germany and the UK. So far, the response has been really great. We've gotten lots of helpful feedback from across the globe. The biggest request has been for an iPad version. I've been working on the iPad version and @ioncache has been working on a Universal version (which will work on both iPads and iPhones/iPods). We're going to sit down and merge our work so that we can get this working on the iPads, which is where it will really shine.

As part of our work to get this working on the iPad we've come to realize that our work requires a web service. After batting some ideas around, a small group of coders in Toronto.pm have gotten together and we've put together a CPAN web service based on ElasticSearch. It's still in the early stages and quite volatile, but it already gives a lot of useful information. @ioncache has already coded a pure JavaScript CPAN search to demonstrate how the API works. We'll make that public in the coming weeks once it gets a few tweaks.